Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be, Who Think You Need to Be, and Who You Think You Are.

I drove home from Norfolk on Thursday. Between Philadelphia and New York I took the Jersey turnpike, and I remembered that back when my best friend used to live in Northern New Jersey, and my family used to go visit his family for the weekend and then we’d be coming home late Sunday night and realize we didn’t have cash for the tolls so we’d have to stop at a turnpike rest area and while my wife would go in and hit a cash machine I’d get cruised.

This is something that happens in rest areas on the Jersey Turnpike, and the Garden State Parkway too. If you are a man, sitting in the driver’s seat of your car while it’s parked at one of these rest areas late at night, before too long another man will walk by your car and his body language will communicate interest. If you happen to be me, the person outside your car will look more or less like you, which is to say he will be a middle-aged “straight-looking” white man who you saw carrying his wife and children’s coats at the IKEA earlier that day. You will toss your head in the direction of the back seat where your two children are sleeping, and you will see the body language of interest turn to the body language of some combination of surprise/embarrassment/disinterest, and then your would-be anonymous sex partner will disappear into the shadows.

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A couple of years ago my uncle’s wife died. Well not actually his wife, his ex-wife. They were married and then divorced before I was born, and despite my close relationship with my uncle, I did not even know of her existence until I was about 20. She and my uncle had remained friends thoughout her life, she outlived her husband, and it fell to him to dispose of her estate.

I take it from this that they were very good friends, or at least very simpatico that they remained this intimate for the nearly 50 years after their divorce, and I suppose that would (at least partially) explain why they ever married to begin with. You see my uncle is gay, and from my conversations with him I understand that he’s always known he way gay, except that when my uncle was a young man, being gay was impossible.

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One of the things I’ve learned by giving up my profession as a filmmaker and photographer and taking up work as a merchant mariner is that it’s not uncommon for people who regard themselves as being from an upper social strata to treat those they regard as being from a lower social strata with something less than politeness.

What I mean is that when I was David Ryan the filmmaker I was (almost) never treated as anything other than a peer by anyone I encountered in almost any social situation. I was afforded respect and even sometimes a certain degree of deference and/or admiration, even by those who were better heeled or better educated or both. People think artists are special.

As Captain Ryan I am I am find I am more likely to encounter both respect, from people impressed by the whole boat-builder/sailboat captain thing; and condescension, from those (I’m guessing) who regard what I do as being “working class” or a likely predictor that I am not as (take your pick) as well educated/affluent/sophisticated as they are.

Yes, I know. This all sounds unbecomingly naive on my part, something akin to a white person finding out they get treated differently and better than black people. I can offer no defense, except to say that until very recently the path my life has taken insulated me from these sorts of things.

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I have written before that as much as I enjoyed Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soul Craft in pieces, I liked it less in whole, and that my wife (who’s experience of class is somewhat different from mine) outright hated it. I think I understand her and my antipathy a little better now.

What I would say based on my experiences in the two years since I read Shop Class is that if I found myself irritated by Crawford’s book it was because I felt like he wanted to enjoy the rootsy glamour of being a vintage motorcycle mechanic, while still being afforded the deference afforded a college professor; that he wanted to be a thinking man’s Paul Teutul so to speak; that he wanted to wear the brown jacket of working class guy without giving up his white collar privilege.

I am less irritated by this now because what I’ve now seen first hand is that it’s not uncommon for college professors to treat motorcycle mechanics rather shabbily.

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Just before we took Mon Tiki to Norfolk I was in TJ Max and I saw a Columbia jacket with a zip out fleece sweater. It was $60 so I bought it. When I got home I saw my chandler was having a close-out in an Imperial PFD/jacket all-in-one. It was $60 so I bought it too. Wednesday morning, when I shot the footage for that short film I posted previously I was wearing both because it was very very cold.

If I make a new acquaintance and we go out to dinner, I can usually tell within a few seconds whether they’ve worked a food service job by how they converse with the hostess as they sit down at the table and any doubt is removed by how they interact with the waitstaff when they come around asking what everyone wants to drink.

This helps me get ready for whether I will need to tip well or tip reaaaaally well.Report

Can you elaborate? I’ve never really worked a front-of-house food service job. I’ve washed dishes a couple times, but I don’t know what I’d look for, or if an experienced person’s conclusion would be that I had or had not worked in food service.Report

I may be misinterpreting what you were trying to get across, but I think there are things that might qualify as “treating people as the help” that are not disrespectful.

For instance, signals that are used to non-verbally communicate what you want with the waitstaff, so you’re not constantly trying to catch their eye, and they can pick it up when they’re scanning their section for things that want doing, not when they’re going purposefully to a particular table – flipping the lid on the teapot, crossing your cutlery on your plate, putting the coaster on top of your beer glass – and probably a host more that I’m not aware of.

I find it’s easier to be kind to wait staff when you view them as sex objects.

Just kidding. I’m kind to all wait staff. It’s when I view them as sex objects that I lay it on really thick.

But seriously . . .

One thing that pisses me off to no end is people that talk over children’s heads, as if they didn’t have ears. That tells me immediately that this person is incredibly dangerous, in that they lack adequate presence of mind. And come to think of it, those times when I have reconsidered such a determination, I have come to regret it.Report

This reminds me of when it was supposedly a disastrous gaffe for a political candidate to admit to knowing what arugula was. Pundits furrowed their brows and opposing pols slapped their knees and guffawed at the arugula-loving Fauntleroy in their midst, like people who’d obviously never worked in a kitchen before.Report

I read it twice: The first time just before I started college; the second when my oldest was about 7 years old. I hardly noticed the son’s role the first time while it became the focus of the second reading. The first time I could enjoy the philosophy and questioning and journey. The second time my heart broke.Report

How much of this do you think is defensiveness vs. out right snobbery? How many professor or professional types were bookish nerds with long memories of being beat up by the kids on the football team and now they are a head.

I am a new and (unfortunately) long-distance relationship with a woman I went to college with. For now, we have to communicate via text, e-mail, and phone call. When we last chatted on Thursday night, we spent some time talking about books and favorite reads. She semi-jokingly asked me “Do you ever read for fun?”

She asked me this because all of my favorite books tend to be in the rough category of “literary fiction” Murakami , Donna Tartt, Michael Chabon and John Irving are about as mainstream as I get. I don’t read much genre fiction like Game of Thrones or the various thrillers that populate best-seller lists. When I read non-fiction, it also tends to be stuff that is unlikely to be found on a best-seller list.

My girlfriend is not the first person to make fun of me a bit for my tastes in books, film, past times, etc. Sometimes the teasing is light. Sometimes it is “Ewww..That’s a book you read in school.”

I really like school and I really hate the “Do you read/watch movies/do X for fun?” line of questioning. Of course I read for fun. What kind of question is that? Why would I read a book that I did not find interesting (unless I had to for work/school)? If I am interested and engrossed in a book, movie, play, it is fun for me! Plus there are countless conversations about zone-out or passive entertainment. As in people say “After a long day of work, I just want to zone out in front of a TV.” I don’t get that.

After a while these questions get very tedious and sometimes I snap and get defensive by being snobby. I feel bad about this but the jokes about what I do for fun are rather tiresome.Report

Does anyone think Kavalier and Clay or Gentlemen of the Road weren’t fun? Actually, I’m a bit surprised you read Chabon, since those two books, for example, would lose a lot for a reader that wasn’t familiar with comic books and Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories respectively. It would be like seeing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern without knowing anything about Hamlet.Report

I know a bit about comic books including the early days of DC and Marvel and that they were largely run by Jewish kids with a need for assimilation*. I know a lot about being a New York City Jewish kid, the Golem, and Shoah. I never read Gentlemen of the Road but loved the Yiddish Policeman’s Union and Wonder Boys. Telegraph Avenue was lukewarm.

I’m bummed that The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is not the Coen’s next movie (as it was rumored to be for about five years.)

There really were government hearings on the connection between comic books and juvenile delinquency. (I don’t think they included investigating the sexual implication o boy sidekicks; that seems like more of a riff on Leslie Fiedler’s C’mon Back to the Raft, Huck Honey.) That’s where the Comics Code came from, and what drove Bill Gaines to leave comics and found MAD Magazine.Report

I’m bummed that the Coen Brothers are dithering on making the Yiddish Policeman’s Union into a movie to. That would have been superbly fun. Somebody shold also make a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser movie and a Dying Earth movie.

There was a major moral panic about comic books in the late 1940s and early 1950s. American parents thought the caused deliquency and crime. The resulting Comics Code set back the development of comic books for decade and gave us our oligarchy in comic books. I doubt that comics would have reached Japanese level of popularity or breadth but they would have been more popular and cover more subject matters earlier.Report

I’m reading one about a comprehensive method for evaluating the performance of baseball players (Win Shares), and another one about a fictional third-rate empire in pre-WWI Central Europe. (The Triune Monarchy: Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania.) Also, Endless Nights for the MD bookclub. Go ahead, call me a nerd.Report

How much of this do you think is defensiveness vs. out right snobbery?

Is there much of a difference? They’re both a function of feeling superior, whether it’s an aristocratic superiority or the moral superiority that comes with once having viewed yourself as a victim. The latter is a little like becoming the guy who treats all women like crap, because he couldn’t get a date to prom.Report

By the way, I am someone who reads literary fiction and can’t say enough bad things about the trend of adults reading books written for pre-teens (Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, The Circle), but I will say that you are missing out with Game of Thrones.Report

My problem with adults reading YA fiction is that it caters to a specific set of adolescent concerns, with clans of supernatural characters acting as a thinly-veiled stand in for high school cliques and dystopic social orders representing the wider adult wold that just doesn’t make any sense.

These things are fine for a fifteen-year old, but I would hope that by the time someone’s age no longer begins with the number 1, he or she would have developed past this sort of solipsism. That is to say, that once you are into your 20s, you ought to have realized that finding your place in the world should be about more than wanting to sit at the cool kids table and that, although the wider world is often a very vexing place, it does in fact make some sense once you’ve gone out into it and acquired some actual experience of it.Report

I think the trend of adults reading books for teens says a lot more about the state of teen fiction and adult fiction than it does about the maturity of the adults in question.

I don’t pick read Harry Potter because I’m stuck in high school. I do it because I want my novels to not be full of rapes and murders. I can maybe think of one fantasy novel for adults I’ve read in the past decade that didn’t at some point make me want to put down the book and walk away.Report

Those are good points. I’ve never thought of it that way before though I don’t read much fantasy.

My big issue is that YA seems to be defended by tautology and axiom. People say to me: “YA is where all the cutting-edge and revolutionary stuff is happening in lit right now.” I ask for examples and people just say “YA is cutting-edge and revolutionary because YA is cutting-edge and revolutionary.”Report

NewDealer, Yeah. I’ve seen better stuff out of people who were trying to be awful. Pushing the envelope, asking the hard questions — even simple ones like “what does it mean to be a hero?” (and, concurrently, when does someone stop being a hero?)Report

JR, I agree with Alan Scott, but would add that I read YA because my kids, and it helps me keep in tune with their world and gives us more things to talk about. Things I like in particukar about Harry Potter and the Hunger Games is the level of moral ambiguity. And Hunger Games deals well with the nature of power, and there’s a great subplot about the heroine wanting to play an active role in the rebellion while the self-annointed leaders just want to use her as a symbol. Those are not immature themes, and I enjoy the opportunity to talk to my kids about these ideas.

I even managed to make it through the Pretties series, which if nothing else has a message against confirmity and beauty obsession, and a realistic female heroine (as the father of three daughters, that’s really important to me). Twilight, however, I could only trudge through one book and that was painful as all hell. But daughter #1 now recognizes it for the dreck it is, and we have fun laughing at it ( and enjoyed watching the movies Vampires Suck together).Report

What moral ambiguity? The whole thing was a very thinly veiled WWII analogy. House Slytherin/Voldermort has stand ins for the Nazis (complete with blonde-hair and blue eyes!), a concern about mudbloods and the need for purity.Report

I mean at the personal level. Snape is the definition of a morally ambiguous character, Sirius Black is on the good side but motivated by vengeance, Dumbledore has a dark history and his own and others’ suspicion that he’s unjustly used Harry cannot be dismissed, James Potter and Sirius Black as students are inexcusably nasty to Snape and this nastiness is never justified, and they never express regret nor ask forgiveness, Ron Weasely deserts his friends, and regrets it not just because ot was wrong but because he fears the reactions of others. Hermione, for a naturalrule follower, is in fact an accomplished liar, the smoothest if the heroic triumvirate. And even Harry himself is less than a morally pure character (sectum sempra!). Also the nasty Malfoys are revealed in the end to truly value love in a way Voldemort cannot comprehend, but they are not thereby brought by Rowling into the circle of good characters–they’re still shits, but not quite thorough-going shits.

Only Voldemort is wholly all one or the other, but even in his case sympathy is asked for by the author, and the suggestion that he was not necessarily innately evil, but shaped by his circumstances. We’re not to forgive him or love him, but are asked to recognize how miserable he truly is.Report

P. S., I remember some Christian minister warning kids away from Harry Potter because it wasn’t clear whether Snape was good or evil. That was the first moment I began to think these books I’d been hearing about might be something I should check out. (Then my brother got daughter#1 the first book for her birthday, and our brief moment of sanctuary from Pottermania was gone forever.)Report

I was in a checkout line once when a pleaded for his mom to buy a Harry Potter book. She got really angry, which is what caught my attention. Something about “those books being full of the Devil’s magic” or somesuch.

I wanted to buy the book and give it to him when they left the store but my wife – wisely, perhaps – put the kibosh on that idea. I’m still uncertain.Report

Just to clarify. I have no problem with YA fiction. My problem is with YA fiction coming to play such a central role in American arts and letters. In general, it seems that the average intended age for books and movies and music just keeps going down and down. I imagine it is because “kids these days” have more purchasing power than they ever did, so it makes sense. I just remember as a kid, feeling like there was a real lack of things that spoke directly to me and that’s what drove me to reading literary fiction in the first place. IMHO, it’s better that as kids grow up and begin to grapple with adult themes in an adult way and not in a manner that explicitly caters to the 15yo brain.

More and more I’m reading stories about how millenials are this helpless generation with no real agency, just floating around like so much flotsam and jetsam in the wake of major social, political and economic occurrences over which they have no control. Now, I get that most of this is just questionable trend pieces and click bait, but there’s some truth to it. However, I can’t help but think that between the helicopter parenting and the rampant credentialism that keeps kids in school and school-like atmospheres for longer than ever and the general PG-13 character of this new century that there is something to this idea of perpetual adolescence.Report

jr, oh, come off it now! The Boomers were the most propagandized generation — is it any wonder that the Millenials don’t behave as a group? They’re pretty helpful people, by and large, and they know how to work together pretty decently. They also aren’t nearly as greedy and selfish as some generations…

The worst example of YA fiction being read seriously by adults is Atlas Shrugged.

I have mixed feelings about this. My issues with Atlas Shrugs are almost the exact opposite of my issues with the Hunger Games. The characters in the Hunger Games seem fine (although I’ve only seen the movie), but they exist in this absurd world that makes no objective sense.

Atlas Shrugged on the other hand is a very good depiction of how an economy can go to shambles while the people making the decisions have seemingly altruistic motives. However, the characters in Atlas Shrugged are so cartoonishly one-dimensional that it basically fails as a novel.

I’ve always thought that Atlas Shrugged might make a decent comic book though.Report

I’m reading stories about how millenials are this helpless generation with no real agency, just floating around like so much flotsam and jetsam in the wake of major social, political and economic occurrences over which they have no control…. I can’t help but think that between the helicopter parenting and the rampant credentialism that keeps kids in school and school-like atmospheres for longer than ever and the general PG-13 character of this new century that there is something to this idea of perpetual adolescence.

I hear you, but I don’t think I really see this in the YA lit I’ve read. The world of the heroes is difficult, but they do have agency and they make things happen. A big subtheme of a lot of it, I think, is about making choices to act to make things better, and not just let yourself be swept along. (Twilight excepted–that series has no redeeming value except that the pages can be used as tinder.)Report

Dumped the Carhartt for Columbia? Are you sure you’re not pining to be a college prof? 😉

In all seriousness, I liked the post. I’ve done physical labor for a living and I’ve worked in the hospitality industry. If I needed to do it again I would, without embarrassment. And I’m still friends with blue collar folks; why wouldn’t I be? Diversity is supposed to be good, right?Report

condescension, from those (I’m guessing) who regard what I do as being “working class” or a likely predictor that I am not as (take your pick) as well educated/affluent/sophisticated as they are.

Yes, I know. This all sounds unbecomingly naive on my part, something akin to a white person finding out they get treated differently and better than black people.

Here’s the thing, for me.

Those people who bust out condescension? Did you not already know that they were like that?

Because I generally already know when they’re like that, and I already carry that in my estimation of their character (yes, it’s not in the “positives” column). I don’t normally particularly like people like that.

If they’re random people that you didn’t know before (and thus didn’t already know that they were like that) are you surprised by their existence? Or by the depths of their condescension? Or… what… precisely?

I do “scathingly condescending” pretty well, although not too many folks no it, because I usually don’t bust it out… but when I do, it’s usually topped with a large layer of satire and served up to folks just like that.Report

2) My father was an MD, but his background was Jersey City Irish working class. He was also a Marine Corps officer and surfer. I suspect this combination of things is why he treated people from all walks of life with a sort of courtly dignity. I just watched the Marine Corps video on Bearing and it very much reminds me of my father and his air of appropriateness, compassion, reserve and authority. I must have absorbed this, because more than once I have been described as “oddly formal” or “strangely polite” with how I interact with people in person.

3) Artist kind of get a pass on everything. When you go into a big paper mill to a shoot everyone thinks you’re cool and what you do is interesting. The office guys are fascinated with the expensive gear and the loading dock guys see you humping gear. Being an artist is sort of like being a tourist in an exotic foreign land. Whatever class currents are running one way or another, you just sort of float along without really feeling them.

4) This all comes to an abrupt halt if you try to do what Tony Comstock tried to so, i.e. deal with transgressive depictions of sexuality without the proper social imprimatur.

5) I knew these sorts of people existed. I had no idea that a “working class guy” would encounter them in a socially awkward way at least a couple times a month, sometimes a couple times a week. And that’s a The Captain, a title that confers a certain gravitas on the person wearing it. I’m sure the number of times one has these sorts of interactions is higher if you’re, let’s say, a bellhop.

So yeah, I knew. But I didn’t Know, if you know what I mean. More Boyz in the Hood than Black Like Me but we take our opportunities for personal growth where and how we find them.Report

I also suspect being an aritst as a cache of bravery because most people suspect or at least know that the chances of economic livlihood are slim to none.

There are two types of reaction that I used to get when I told people I was in an MFA program:

1. How are you going to pay the bills?

2. “That’s really cool. Following your passions. I wish I was that brave.”

I generally don’t think people respect artists truly because of how economically precarious the careers are and the fact that I read so many stories about people trying to get artists to work for free for the “exposure”. I do suspect that most people intrinsically understand that it is hard life and deserving of some admiration for the try. I didn’t even carry around gear. I was a theatre director which is about as non-concrete as you can get until the finished product and opening night.

Law School. I’m just one of many arts and humanities people looking for a decent career and one that is vaguely scholarly or at least has pretensions towards being such. Theatre grad school? How many people do that every year? A couple of hundred? A thousand or so? My class in theatre grad school had 50 or so people (9 directors, 8 playwrights, and the remaining were actors). And that is on the big side. My law school class had many, many more and was on the small side for law schools.Report

NewDealer, It’s hard to respect people who make a living off bullshittery. Particularly when they walk around thinking that they’re gods’ gift to the world, and their ideas are the only ones worthy of any consideration whatsoever.

I respect art — but I suspect I find it in far more places than you do.

I respect the artistry of ideas, and enjoy watching them take flight, each idea being molded as it is passed from hand to hand.Report

As I am a gay man myself I feel at liberty to touch on your first point. I’m aware of that cultural quirk of the gay community but have not directly experienced it myself. I wouldn’t ascribe this to any virtue on my part so much as geographical impracticality when I was younger (you simply can not cruise in the woods of a community of 200 people three hours drive from the nearest urban area); followed by my escaping to an urban environment where it was completely unnecessary (Minneapolis in the late 90’s was a gay haven, it has only gotten nicer since then).

I wonder, though, whether this phenomenon will continue? I mean the pressure to be closeted and the danger of same sexual liaisons have never been as low as they are. The new generations would probably view cruising with the same distaste that straight people do. So one could assume that the cruising culture will vanish with the gay generations that were forced to use it. Then again, gay pairings involve two men and some men can be somewhat, shall we say, less discriminating than a pairing that involves a woman may generally be inclined to be. It’ll be interesting to see if cruising goes the way of the gay bookstore or if it endures in some diminished form.Report

That probably depends on how strictly you define cruising. People approaching strangers in parked cars? That won’t be around much longer.

But now a whole new generation of people are arranging anonymous hookups via mobile phone apps. Whatever one thinks of anonymous sex, I think we can all agree that a state of affairs in which David is not approached by strangers at a truck stop is a step up.Report

Ah yes, an excellent question! I’d define cruising as being seeking anonymous sex in public or near public places. Connecting for casual anonymous sex via the internet, on the other hand, I’d define as hookups and that will go away somewhere around when we all upload our brains into computers and abandon our corporeal existence.Report

I like the post. Alot. I come at this stuff from a different angle, I guess, given that since the time I was small I’ve noticed the disregard with which the Uppers treat the Lowers, and have always found that irritating. That might have been due to witnessing my parents striving not only for Respeck from what they view as their Betters but also from the sense of Realization that they thought came from actually attaining Betterness. Whatever. In my own life, tho, I know that I often like to appear and act more Lower than I otherwise might be able to pull off in front of the Betters just to see the reactions.

Which makes me wonder, given the apparent moral of the story: why did you throw out the Carhart?Report

I’ve noticed the disregard with which the Uppers treat the Lowers, and have always found that irritating.

Eh, it seems no more or less bad than how the In treat the Out, or the Blues treat the Greys, or any one of a number of other “We are the privileged” vs. “You suck”.

I sort of lump it all in with “humans who treat other people poorly for the express purpose of lifting their sad little selves up are on my ‘shitty humans’ list and I can’t really be bothered to care too much about their opinions” category.Report

Yeah, you’re probably right. When I was in grad school I remember recognizing – with a very distinct clarity – how MA students were treated by the PhD students. Who had funding, who didn’t. That sort of thing. There are lots of silly markers based on the conflating individually determined self-worth with externally – socially – determined criteria. Status. All that. I’m sure I’m not immune, but it always strikes me as very, very silly.Report

I have always prided myself in being able to traverse back and forth pretty well between various classes of people. I have an academic background and love talking shop with other academics but it can be exhausting to be ‘on’ the entire time so I don’t sound like an idiot. I also love farmers and blue-collar folks because they make me feel a bit more comfortable in my own skin despite the fact that they often know a lot more than me about more practical things and often I crave that knowledge more. Ultimately what I have learned is that everyone has something to teach us if we let them.Report

It's funny how browsers I think are a thing (specifically Vivaldi and Brave) don't even register on this list. Goes to show my techie bubble.

Browsers used to have better names. Netscape was brilliant. What the heck is a Firefox? (It's "Firebird" with IP considerations is what it is.) Chrome? Edge? Edge? Come on.

It's amazing how quickly Chrome accomplished what Firefox never did. It just goes to show the power of corporate muscle. When Google announced they were creating a browser I thought it was kind of dumb. I was wrong.

People say Firefox is better than Chrome now but I just can't get into the groove of it. Chrome doesn't work right on one of my computers and I use Firefox on it. it's passable, but I wish Chrome worked on it.

With Internet Explorer being replaced by Edge and Edge being Chrome-based, that means may be looking at 3 of the top 5 and 85% of desktop browsing occurring through Chromium browsers. That's concerning.

The ship's presence, he speculated, might have been related to the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Did Trump tweet anything about this, you ask?

The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia. We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian “Skyfall” explosion has people worried about the air around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!

As some of you know, I lost my father two weeks ago. My mother called me that Friday afternoon and said, in not such direct words, that “you better try to get up here if you can.”

I did, but I was too late. But in the aftermath of it, it was good to be there. My mother and I ate together for two weeks (my brother and his family are coming in later, such are the vagaries of scheduling bereavement leave in a government agency). We cooked some favorite things. My mom roasted a chicken and then laughed ruefully and said “I guess it’ll be harder to use a whole one up now” and the day after that, we made a favorite chicken enchilada recipe given us by a former minister of her church who had lived in the Southwest. And she baked a favorite cake of ours (my father was diabetic and we had to be careful about sweets in the house, and also baking was hard while he was so unwell). I think it helped, maybe?

There’s a German word, Kummerspeck, which literally means “Grief-bacon” and is used to refer to the weight you put on while grieving. I had scoffed at that before because the more minor griefs (eg., breakups) I had suffered made me NOT want to eat…..but I know I’ve put on a couple pounds in the last two weeks and will have to explain to my doctor when I go in for my checkup on Tuesday….

And people brought in food – lasagna, and bread, and other things.

And we went out to eat lunch a couple times; before my father’s health failed so much going out to restaurants was a favorite thing and my mom hadn’t been able to do it, really, for six months or more while he was needing her care.

When I spoke to her today after I got home, she noted that even though she had told the ‘church ladies’ who do bereavement lunches she didn’t want them to go to the trouble for the memorial service this fall (we have some people with some specific dietary concerns coming), someone did call her back and suggest a dessert-and-coffee reception before the service and I urged her to have them do that – I have fixed things many times for funeral lunches at my own church and it feels very much like it’s one kindness I can do for the family, and having a piece of cake or a few cookies may make small talk easier in a time when it’s going to be hard.

I admit I always rolled my eyes over the “how to relate to your weird dumb relative who isn’t like you” pieces, or, worse, the “you should refuse to spend time with them or try to harangue them into your viewpoint over the Thanksgiving table” pieces, because my family has a lot of….different…..people in it, and we’ve always managed. You talk about other stuff, that’s all. You talk about how a favorite team is doing or the funny things someone’s kids are doing or you share memories….

Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire financier and accused sex trafficker, is dead by suicide, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials told NBC News he was found at 7:30 a.m. ET at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York and that he hanged himself.

Epstein accuser claims she was ordered to have sex with prominent men

He was transported Saturday morning from the Metropolitan Correctional Center to a hospital in Lower Manhattan. Upon arrival, he was in cardiac arrest, people familiar with the matter say.

Epstein, 66, was being held on federal sex trafficking charges.

He was arrested July 6 in Teterboro, New Jersey, as he returned from Paris on a private jet.

He had pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.

The indictment on his case showed that he sought out minors, some as young as 14, from at least 2002 through 2005 and paying them hundreds of dollars in cash for sex at either his Manhattan townhouse or his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, federal prosecutors revealed last month.

Epstein was charged with one count of sex trafficking conspiracy and one count of sex trafficking. He faced up to 45 years in prison if found guilty.